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Originally Posted by Scissors
You're in luck, as I'm in the midst of conducting a meta-analysis on this very topic as part of an effort to teach myself R. The causes are varied and complex, but do not in any way lead to the conclusion that being black makes one commit more serious crimes, or be more likely to commit them. And, no, Blacks in the U.S. are not responsible for 95+% of "serious" crimes (a vague term to begin with).
The "Black = violent criminal" myth, like the "female wage gap" and "firearms = homicides" myths, stems largely from a gross inability for the majority of the population to understand math, much less basic to advanced statistical concepts.
The "13=52" rallying cry of racists is a raw reference to two data points--the percent of the population made up of Blacks and the percent of homicides committed by Blacks. (And if you think "13%=52%" is bad, wait until you learn that "0.24% = 5.8%". That's the percent of the population made up of Cops vs the percent of homicides committed by Cops.) But this ignores the great many causal factors that lead to this result. Let's start at the beginning…
We know that poverty is "sticky" in that people who are born into poverty are likely to still be impoverished when they have children. Violent and property crimes, due to a variety of economic factors, are more likely to be committed by those who are poor or impoverished. While Europe gets to be all self-righteous about their lower homicide and poverty rates, they also callously tossed aside their slave colonies as separate nations, and now get to conveniently exclude them from their national statistics. The U.S., on the other hand, had largely retained our enslaved population within our borders following the Civil War. And though we rightfully banned slavery, things didn't magically become easy for Blacks overnight. Many decades of racism, anti-Black legislation, and other factors ensured that poverty and myths about them would remain in place for the vast majority of their population for a very long time. There were exceptions, but outliers don't disprove trends.
Fast forward to more modern times and, while much progress has been made, it's only been a few generations and there are still other factors in play. As someone else correctly pointed out, the likelihood that one will commit homicide is strongly correlated with being raised by a single mother. Economics plays a role here as well, but also:
- Blacks are typically given longer prison sentences for equal crimes
- Blacks are more likely to be falsely imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit
- They suffer from higher conviction rates for equal crimes
- The simple fact that city populations are proportionately more Black than rural populations. Cities naturally have higher violent crime rates due to a higher density of stressors and contacts, yielding more opportunities for things to go wrong between individuals, that are also more likely to go wrong.
These factors above, combined with others, results in many Black children being raised without fathers. That lack of income source and male guidance, unsurprisingly, perpetuates cycles of poverty and violence.
There are also police-related impacts. For instance, a police officer is nearly 3,000 times more likely to kill a Black person than a Black person is to kill a police officer. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the Black community being less likely to want to call the Police, who are by far the most violent group in America. We also have a tendency for a large part of the White population to view citizens as subservient to the Government, and that the life of a police officer (who is human) is more valuable than the life of the Black person that officer kills (who is also human)--this feeds back into the false belief that Blacks deserve to be treated poorly.
We also have the bi-partisan War on Drugs, a colossal failure and waste of money. The primarily-White purchasers are given light sentences and offers of treatment, whereas the primarily-Black and -Hispanic sellers and transporters of the product are given harsh sentences and often killed, despite both groups being equally responsible for the drug trade. Simple legalization without draconian taxation would eliminate most of this issue.
Finally, there's a tendency for racists to pretend that defensive firearm usage is only something that White people do. Every Black shooting, in their mind, is yet another example of "Black violence" whereas a White person shooting someone to death to defend himself is "exercising his Constitutional rights".
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Fair enough. I present two counterpoints. Please explain.
1. You mentioned poverty of blacks is a big cause of black crime/violence. Would you say most Jews came over to the US over the past century with lots of money?
My family immigrated from Belorussia (Belarus). Part of them in the 1890's and the other half after The Holocaust (the few that hadn't been gassed to death). ALL of them came over dirt poor. They settled in Jewish neighborhoods in Boston and NYC were the MAJORITY of the Jewish immigrants were dirt poor. They experienced widespread antisemitism. From the time they immigrated (1890's) all the way through the 1960's-1970's. Yet, they all studied hard, worked sheet jobs, and got ahead. Not turned to crime despite no opportunity and being poor.
My grandfather got a PhD in 1937. If you're not aware, in 1937, a PhD was a VERY big deal. I'll say less than 0.01% of the population had a PhD back then.
He was turned down for multiple professor positions at multiple universities in Philly, Boston, and NYC. Multiple times, they flat out told him "We have no place for another Jew". Dead serious. Can you get much more antisemitic?
So he worked even harder to take a low level HS principal position (back in the 1940's--a HS principal made crap money--this was before public sector unions). My family lived at the "bottom of the barrel". They were poor as F. Having steak once each 3-4 months was a dam delicacy.
Despite this, everybody in my family worked hard. None had kids at age 15. They ended up graduating from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and NYU and all made something of themselves.
So tell me again how blacks were treated "disproportionately bad" after the Civil Rights Act and couldn't get ahead the same way my Jewish family did?
2. You mentioned how bad cops are. Agreed there are alot of bad apples behind the blue. But do you think a decent number of them go rogue from dealing with sheet bags all day, every day? Is there any possibility?
3. I'm adding a point. Many Asians come to the US poor as F. From Vietnam, Laos, etc. How come they aren't represented in the same way blacks are as far as crime statistics? Or are they simply "not discriminated against"? I'd make the argument being Asian is immensely harder than being black over the past 20+ years in the US.